Just because I’ve been writing a book and blogging less frequently doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten about you. As the days have grown shorter and darker, I’m reminded of all the places where I’ve found light and warmth over the past few years. One of those places is right here, on this blog, writing for you, and sharing with you. The Midlife Second Wife is where I’ve made some lasting friendships, met more wonderful people than any WordPress statistic could reveal, and where I’ve encountered extraordinary opportunities. This is never more evident to me than when I’m caught up in preparations for the holiday season. Why is this so? I think it’s because this is such a mindful time of year—a time when we move through our days with particular intention, when we think of the people we love who are no longer here, and the ones we cannot wait to greet with open arms.

I wish you and your loved ones all the illumination and warmth of the holiday season—whether generated by a menorah, by the light from a mosque, by the moon and stars, or, as at our home, by the twinkling candles of a Christmas tree. May the light find you and shine upon you gently, and may peace, love, and happiness be yours, now and throughout the New Year.

“We only ever danced at weddings …” That’s a line from a poem I wrote nearly 25 years ago about my father. I was a 33-year-old creative writing student at Oberlin College then, still working through the 20-year-old grief of losing my father soon after I turned 13. In the 1960s, my father and I had several opportunities to dance together—three of my cousins were married in elaborate celebrations of love, with opulent receptions in Cleveland hotel ballrooms. The remnants of these memories reveal snapshot scenes: a fountain flowing with champagne, my glamorous cousins in gowns, relatives and strangers linked in the dabke, a traditional Lebanese folk dance accompanied by drums. But like so much of what passed for happiness in the 1960s, these moments were evanescent. Even the hotels are gone.

That’s why I’m so grateful to have this picture of my dad. There aren’t many of them; he was always the one taking the pictures. One of my cousins found an undeveloped roll of film in her late mother’s apartment, took it to a photography store in Cleveland, and surprised me with this print.

As Father’s Day approaches, my dad feels closer to me than ever. I’m sorting through old photos of him (courtesy of my cousin), reading his war letters home, and working on a memoir in which he has the starring role. I’m also sorting through some of my old photo albums, and came across this picture, which symbolizes so much for me.

The author performing the dabke at an international festival.

After my father died, my Sicilian-American mother wanted to keep his heritage alive for me. She joined the local Lebanese social club, and I was enlisted to dance with other young people at the Lorain International Festival. This would have been around 1972. In this photo, I’m performing the dabke, the dance I learned as a child, watching my relatives at those glamorous weddings.

Two years later, I would represent my culture as the Lebanese-Syrian Princess at this same festival. But that’s another story.

All my life, I thought I was participating in these activities to please my mother and honor my father’s memory. It’s only now that I realize the dancing was as much for me as it was for him, keeping the rhythm of love and family alive in my heart.

Me, circa 1961, during the first year of JFK’s presidency. My father sold dolls in his hardware store (although not the Madame Alexander Caroline doll), and a highlight of the year was attending the Worthington Toy and Gift Show.

Like most American schoolchildren on November 22, 1963, I was sitting at a desk when the news reached us. It was after lunch, and, if I were to guess, my second-grade class was doing phonics exercises when our principal, Sister Mary Vaughan, announced over the P.A. system that President Kennedy had been shot, and would we all please stop our work and pray for him?

After the initial gasps and cries of disbelief, the room became as quiet as the empty church across the alley. I don’t know with certainty that this happened, but I imagine our teacher, Miss Foreman, pulling out her rosary, quietly marking each bead with its designated prayer—the Our Father or the Hail Mary or the Glory Be. There’s no doubt in my memory about this, however; I clenched my hands together as tightly as I could and squeezed my eyes shut: this was the most important praying I had ever done before, and it had to count.

So fierce was my prayerful concentration that I barely heard the P.A. system crackle back to life. Sister Mary Vaughan had returned to announce that the President had died. We were now to pray for his immortal soul. You could tell she had been crying, but she was trying to be brave for us. She was, in fact, the bravest person I knew. She once traded in her black habit for the cooler white one worn by the Sisters of Notre Dame when they served as missionaries in India. She spoke at assemblies in the cafeteria about the experience, asking us to contribute our pennies and dimes to the missions. There were rumors that she might leave St Mary’s at the end of the school year, possibly to return to India. I hoped it wasn’t true. She was the kindest of all the nuns and teachers at St. Mary’s, and I knew I would miss her just as much as I would miss President Kennedy.

President Kennedy. He was dead, and I couldn’t really grasp what that meant. I had never known anyone who died before. Not that I actually knew him, but I did see him once in person, before he became president. This was a memory far more powerful than any television image, and there were certainly many of those to recall. It seemed as though he was on television all the time.

It was three years ago, on Monday, September 27, 1960. I was four-years-old and, like most days spent in my father’s hardware store in Elyria, Ohio, I was coveting the dolls in the toy aisle, or scribbling with crayons on the large pads of paper that had “Supreme Hardware” printed in green letters on the top.

On that particular day, crowds began to gather on either side of Middle Avenue. Senator John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign motorcade route was to proceed right past the store, and my father wanted to make sure we were witness to history. He scooped me up, rushed us outside, and perched me on his shoulders so I’d have a good view.

The man who was running for president waved to us from the convertible limousine—he waved to everyone on the sidelines—all of us cheering “JFK! JFK!” Someone tossed pretend straw hats into the crowd, and my father caught one. “WIN WITH KENNEDY” was stamped on the red, white, and blue headband. Then, just as quickly as the excitement peaked, the limousine drove north on Middle Avenue to take the Senator and his motorcade on to his next stop.

“Motorcade” wasn’t a word I knew then. I only knew that the car in which Senator Kennedy sat, perched on the backseat’s rear ledge, was simply part of the parade, and reminded me of my father’s Cadillac convertible. But three years later, the word “motorcade” was forcibly added to my vocabulary, along with “assassinated” and “assassin,” “rotunda,” and “caisson.”

I suddenly thought of Caroline. I was barely two years older than she; I couldn’t imagine that the pert little girl I thought of as a kindred spirit wouldn’t have a father anymore.

Like most little girls in 1963, Caroline represented for me a combination of fairy-tale princess, sister, and playmate. I was an only child, so it thrilled me to know that someone nearly my age lived in the White House with such glamorous parents and an adorable baby brother. I played with Caroline paper dolls, and I had a child-sized Kennedy rocking chair.

After school let out, Mrs. Schaeffer, whose daughter was in my class, dropped me off at the corner of my street. When I reached our front sidewalk, I could see my mother, standing as she always did, preparing dinner at the dining room table. (Our kitchen was a small galley with hardly any counter space.) She was crying, and even though I knew that what happened that day was horrible, it still surprised me—and frightened me a little—to see my mother crying like that. The television was on; I’m almost positive that it was tuned to CBS and Walter Cronkite, because in my mother’s view, the fourth-most revered man in the world (after Pope Paul VI, President Kennedy, and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen), was Walter Cronkite. I don’t, however, remember seeing any of the coverage from that day.

Did my mother think the reporting was too disturbing for me to hear? Was I too young to join her and my father in front of the set? Would she have turned it off and wait to get more news from the afternoon paper? Or wait until I had fallen asleep? I honestly don’t remember.

The next television memory I have was generated a couple of days later. My parents and I had gathered at my Aunt Mary’s house on Pinewood Drive to watch the funeral procession on her new TV.

We cried when we saw Caroline and John-John—especially when he saluted his father. The horse-drawn caisson (that word fascinates me still) making its long way through Washington—such a vastly different procession from the motorcade I had witnessed three years earlier—mesmerized me.

My mother used to tell me that when I was little, if I liked a person, I would say “He (or she) gots a nice face.” I thought President Kennedy had a nice face. I loved his smile, and the way he looked right at us when he spoke to us on television, the way he grinned and waved from that convertible limousine on his swing through Elyria, Ohio. He was so handsome. Now he was gone, hidden inside the flag-draped coffin.

Those images from the funeral cortege (another word I learned that weekend), will always stay with me, but I learned something else during that solemn broadcast that would prove even more powerful.

My mother and I used to light votive candles in church as part of our prayers of intercession. I never gave much thought to the fact that the candle would eventually burn itself out, and a fresh new votive would replace it. It seemed to me that the act of lighting the candle was the important thing. But then the television cameras showed us where President Kennedy would be buried, in Arlington National Cemetery, and Walter Cronkite told us that an eternal flame would mark the President’s grave site. I imagined the largest votive candle in the world, one that would never burn itself out.

So many words and images seared themselves into my consciousness that November.

Disclosure: I am participating in the Verizon Boomer Voices program and will be provided with a wireless device and six months of service in exchange for my honest opinions about the product.

I recently hosted a house party as a member of the Verizon Boomer Voices Program. I called it “A Very Verizon Party,” and it featured my own take on Michael Feldman’s Whad’ya Know? quiz show, a program produced by Public Radio International. I’m pleased to report that a very good time was had by all, what with the great food, good fun, and gadgets galore courtesy of the techno-geniuses at Verizon Wireless. I wish all of you could have been there, but there wouldn’t have been enough Chocolate Tea Cake to go around. (Do you like the way I incorporated the black and red Verizon Wireless logo colors into my dessert?)

Voilà! I frosted this with strawberry jam and garnished it accordingly.

As a reader of this blog, this is your consolation prize: the chance to peer through the looking glass of your screen and glimpse a few highlights from the party. You’re never far from my thoughts, dear readers. Come along and enjoy!

The swag bags were set by the chimney with care…

…in hopes that Verizon soon would be there.

Look at the great swag nestled in those black and red bags: A water bottle (complete with a nifty ice holder); a phone holder; a stylus that doubles as a pen; a flash drive stocked with detailed information on the devices demonstrated at the party; a list of nearby Verizon Wireless stores and, to go with it, a $50 coupon redeemable with purchase at one of those stores.

And check out the buffet table! In addition to the chocolate tea cake, I served fresh strawberries, an array of cheeses (and crackers), assorted nuts, and a few decadent sweets from Trader Joe’s.

These are some of the prizes that were up for grabs:To keep things moving along, I held a few old-fashioned drawings. But my guests really loved playing “Whad’ya Know About Verizon Wireless?” They wrote their names on index cards upon their arrival, and I drew two cards for each round of play. I had already downloaded two service bell apps—one for my iPhone and on for the DROID RAZR MAXX HD I’ve been testing for the program. Whoever rang the bell first got to answer the first question (there were five questions in each round).

I wish I had pictures of the contestants playing the game, but here are some of the sample questions. As with Feldman’s program, the questions were painstakingly researched, but the answers were not. (How would you do with these questions?)

I. A FITBIT is:

a) a device that fits into a horse’s bridle
b) a type of healthy, delicious candy that has zero calories
c) a item of apparel that will always fit you no matter how much weight you gain
d) a device that tracks your calories, activity, and sleep and syncs with your mobile device or laptop

II. TRUE OR FALSE:

Accessories and devices available through Verizon Wireless will only work with the Android Operating System

III. The slogan or tagline in the old Verizon commercials is:

a) Rethink Possible
b) The Power of a Network
c) Can You Hear Me Now?
d) Just Do It.

IV. TRUE OR FALSE: The iconic spokesperson for Verizon Wireless, featured in the “Can you hear me now?” commercials, had blond hair and wore a long-sleeved blue shirt.

V. The Verizon Wireless store closest to where we’re having this party is located:

a) at Westgate Mall
b) at Crocker Park
c) at Tower City
d) at Legacy Village

Here are some pictures of my guests.

Oh, Verizon? If you need a mascot may I suggest our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Sandy?

Ohio artist Leslie Miller was working on this collage—part of a planned series of mixed-media bird paintings—when she was diagnosed with uterine cancer in December of 2003. It is one of the last painted works she was able to complete before losing function on the right side of her body.

In one of cancer’s mystifying quirks, rogue cells bypassed Leslie’s lungs to cross the blood-brain barrier—a highly unusual occurrence—nestling themselves near the center of her brain. Her original cancer, cured after months of chemotherapy and radiation, proved relentless after all: she now had brain cancer. She endured Gamma Knife Radiosurgery (a closed-skull procedure), 10 weeks of radiation, and, finally, traditional open-skull surgery. Her brain—arguably the body’s most sensitive organ—could take no more. Radiation necrosis stilled the hand that had coaxed charcoal, oils, and brushes into astonishing works of art for nearly five decades.

Chemotherapy and radiation saved her life but made it worse.

Ask her what kept her going throughout her health crisis, and her placid demeanor grows slightly emphatic: “I’d just get disgusted with myself for being a crybaby, and tell myself: ‘Stop it! Stop whining and get busy!'”

And so she pushed back against the changes in her life. Eager to return to the bird series, she compensated for her increasing paralysis by resorting to more controllable surfaces on which to work. If she could no longer stand and manage a canvas, she could sit at her dining room table and draw on envelopes.

By 2006, however, the loss of the fine motor skills so essential to drawing was complete. In a masterful reinvention, Leslie exchanged brushes and pencils for a Panasonic Lumix digital camera, finding art in the ordinary elements of daily life: bowls of green apples and cherries (“Because life is a bowl of cherries,” she says with wry humor); a bunch of beets on an enamel table; photographs of every friend who stopped by to visit. No one, myself included, escaped without getting their “portrait” done.

A portrait of the artist with her friends. The curator of her exhibition can be seen at the far right of the top row; I’m at the far left. Photo credit: Marci Janas Rich

Now, at 63—10 years after her first diagnosis—Leslie is overseeing preparations for a retrospective solo exhibition of her life’s work at the Beth K. Stocker Art Gallery on the campus of Lorain County Community College in Northeast Ohio. It is a dream come true, she says; she has fantasized about such an exhibition for years.

Born and raised in the college town of Oberlin, Ohio, where she lives today, this solo exhibition, appropriately titled Paper Painting Before Radiation, is the first to be presented in her native Lorain County.

Guest curator Jean Kondo Weigl has selected 81 examples of Leslie’s works on paper in mixed media—representing drawing, painting, printmaking, and collage—for the retrospective, which will be on view from August 26 through September 28, 2013. The works represent only a fraction of the art Leslie created between 1981 and 2006.

Even though Leslie’s art has won awards and earned her grants, residencies, and solo and group exhibitions—including one at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s prestigious May Show in 1993—much of it has never been seen before.

“Leslie has received significant recognition throughout her career,” says Kondo Weigl, “but her focus has always been the practice of her art, rather than its promotion. As a result, she’s received considerably less public attention and critical acclaim than her work deserves.”

I asked her what her art means to her. (Even though she is no longer able to paint, even though taking photographs has become more difficult, I cannot use the past tense.)

“It’s just a passion,” she tells me. “Something I get lost in. A kind of escape from myself.” She repeats a quote attributed to Mark Rothko that she recalls reading. “He said, and this is a paraphrase, ‘It’s nice when people come to see me in my studio, but it’s nice when they leave. It’s even nicer when I leave.'”

Leslie will just have to put up with the throngs of art lovers who will be clamoring to see her work. I suspect she knows how much pleasure this will give her.

About the ArtistLeslie Miller earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in religion from Bates College, and a Master of Arts diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She has been awarded professional development grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams, Massachusetts; she was in residence at the latter for three consecutive years in the 1990s and was part of group exhibition there. She has also held a residency at I-Park in East Haddam, Connecticut. She won the Best in Show prize at the Beck Center in Lakewood, Ohio, where her work was part of a group exhibition called Proscenium ’92.

Other group exhibitions include shows at the Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania; the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art; the College of Wooster Art Museum; the Mather Gallery at Case Western Reserve University; the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts in Oberlin, Ohio; the Pearl Conard Gallery at the Ohio State University; and the May Show at the Cleveland Museum of Art, which was juried and curated by Evan Turner, director emeritus of the museum.

Solo exhibitions featuring her work have been held at Jamaica Plain Gallery in Boston, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation in Miami, Florida; and in Israel at the American Cultural Centers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

She began writing poetry in 2006, and Foothills Publishing released a chapbook of her work, Boom Time: 1946-1964, in 2007. She has since completed a nearly book-length manuscript.

My mother, to quote Yul Brynner in The King and I, was a puzzlement. She was a first-generation Sicilian-American—strict and extremely Catholic—yet the legendary burlesque artist Gypsy Rose Lee so fascinated her that she purchased a copy of Lee’s autobiography. By the time I was six or seven and a book magpie, reading anything I found lying around the house, I picked up the memoir and dove in. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary had not yet been published, so if an unfamiliar word ground my reading to a halt, I went to my most trusted source: My mother.

“Mom, what does ‘lesbian’ mean?”

“What?” She pretended not to hear me.

“Lesbian. What does it mean? It says here that someone in the book couldn’t go back to Chicago, because they knew her there as a lesbian. What’s a lesbian?”

Having sufficiently recovered, my mother replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s a kind of religion.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

It could be said that my mother taught me the art of dissembling—something that could come in handy later if I ever became a fiction writer. Or entered politics.

But that’s selling her short. Although it is true that she presented me with a lifetime of exasperating puzzles and mixed messages, she also taught me many wonderful things. Here’s a short list:

A love of Broadway musicals. (Hence the King and I reference.)

A love of classical music. (When I think of Saturday afternoons as a child, I always think of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts while cleaning the house. “Si mi chiamano,” choreographed with a dust rag, enhanced by the smell of Pledge.)

A love of dogs, as evidenced by this photograph.

The lesbian red herring notwithstanding, a respect for honesty and integrity, and an expectation of both from me.

An abiding faith in God. She might have skipped Mass with regularity, but she taught me how to pray. And she always believed that her own prayers would be answered.

A love of cooking and baking. I think the recipe section of my blog attests to this.

A sense of style and a love of fashion. We didn’t have much money when I was growing up, but my mother would rather go shopping than pay the electric bill. In this way and in others (again, I think of her disingenuous definition), I formed healthy and prudent life habits, sometimes as antidotes to her examples.

My mother was a complicated woman, which is to say that she was human. By trial and error, although often with her example to guide me, I figured out a way to be in the world.